[…] Perhaps the biggest mistake the United States made with regard to NATO occurred after the Soviet Union collapsed but before the first tranche of expansion. The bitter fruit of the seeds planted then are now on painful display.
On June 18, 1997, one month before the Senate voted on the first round of NATO enlargement, then-senator Joe Biden gave a speech at the Atlantic Council on the future of foreign policy. In voicing his support for NATO expansion, he tried to parry the argument that expansion would prompt a negative reaction from Russia.
With great confidence, Biden argued that not only would Russia not resist eastward expansion, but also they would welcome it. The many Russian officials with whom Biden had personally met “all understood” the “nonaggressiveness implicit” in NATO’s assurances that it had “no reason, intention, or plan” to place nuclear weapons “or substantial combat forces of current members on the territory of new member states.”
Well, not all Russian politicians accepted that, Biden admitted. In a mocking tone, he acknowledged meeting with two senior Kremlin officials who declared “they don’t want this NATO expansion, they know it’s not in their security interests, and on and on and said ‘well if you do that we may have to look to China.’ And I couldn’t help but using the colloquial expression from my state by saying ‘lotsa luck in your senior year!’ You know, good luck.” Then, prompting derisive laughter from the audience, he added, “and if that doesn’t work, then try Iran.”
Biden’s cringeworthy comments didn’t end there: “And they know, and I knew, and they knew, everybody knows, that [moving toward China and Iran] is not an option. And everybody knows, every one of those leaders acknowledges and needs—and they resent it—but they need, they need to look West.”
As it turned out, Russia did not need to look West, and they have indeed powerfully aligned themselves with both China and Iran (recently adding a military pact with North Korea). Läs artikel